Review

   Mary Gordon recommends Break Every Rule, essays by Carole Maso: “An original and compelling exploration of narrative strategies.” (Counterpoint)

Madeline DeFrees recommends Beethoven and the Birds, poems by Judith Skillman: “Forty-five poems from the author whose first collection, Worship of the Visible Spectrum, won the King County Arts Commission’s Book Award in 1988. The poems celebrate the author’s return to playing the violin after a lapse of nine years. Images drawn from music and…

M. L. Rosenthal recommends Complete Poems, a collection by Kenneth Fearing (National Poetry Foundation): “It’s a special joy to have the work of this wry, sardonic, thoroughly alive Catullus of the American Depression once more in print. (Edward Dahlberg compared him with Corbière-and that was true, too.)”

Philip Levine recommends Believers, stories and a novella by Charles Baxter: “This is a superb collection; the stories are unusually daring and imaginative-‘Time Exposure’ and ‘The Lures for Love’ are two not to be forgotten. The novella ‘Believers’ demonstrates an extraordinary ability to deal with and invoke a past era and to show how sex,…

Robert Boswell recommends Breathe Something Nice, stories by Emily Hammond: “This is an extraordinary collection of stories-beautifully written, artfully crafted, and utterly haunting. It should be required reading in every workshop in the country.” Reviewed in “Bookshelf” on page 229. (Nevada)

Maura Stanton recommends Crazy Woman, a novel by Kate Horsley (Ballantine): “This first novel is an imaginative tour de force. By using the form of a ‘captivity narrative,’ Horsley incorporates surreal events successfully into a realistic narrative. The result is dazzling language and vivid characters.”